Blood Red
by joiede
Summary: [RenoTifaCloud triangle] When Cloud descends into madness, the Turks want him dead, and Tifa just so happens to be his weak point... [SUMMARY CHANGED]
1. Chapter 1

A brief AN: I haven't gotten any farther than this chapter, so it may be a while till the next update (if I remember to, at all. Not very good at this updating business.) I promise I'm not a scary person, so if you like it, let me know (a good motivation for faster updates.) Likewise, if it's horrible (a good hint to haul my butt out and never return.) Onwards now…

Blood Red

From the corner of her eye, Tifa forced herself to access the grisly scene strewn before her.

Dozens of slivered corpses propagated the sidewalk—laid out in an almost decorative contrast of crimson over slate. The manifestation of red was enough to give any blood fetishist a reason to jack off for the rest of their life. Men, women, children… Tifa counted the bodies.

One potato, two potato, three potato, four… thirteen, fourteen… twenty-eight, twenty-nine…

Surprisingly enough, she wasn't as horrified by the deceased forms as she should have been. There was a man sprawled beside her, slumped in a puddle of sticky black blood. If she touched his face, she could've felt the final tremors of life leak from his skin. With a quivering hand, Tifa reached over to push a strand of snarled hair from his cheek, "Vincent. Wake up."

Cloud was laughing. Tifa refused to look at him.

"Vincent," she shook his shoulder with her free hand, a little harder than she intended, "I know you're not dead. You're too vain to die looking like this."

Her vision was starting to blur. When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse, "You look like shit, Valentine."

Any moment now, she expected him to quirk his eyebrow and send her a bemused glare. He was always trying to look scary, the pretentious jerk.

"Idiot," Tifa imagined whacking him over the head with a rubber mallet. She tried to pry his eyes open, "What's wrong with you?" Her throat was burning. "You're so lazy. Wake up already."

Cloud was still laughing. It surprised her that a laughing Cloud worried her more than a silent Cloud. "He's dead, you know." His tone was lighthearted—a foil to her cracking interior.

"Don't talk to me." She didn't want to deal with him now, when her only reaction would be to get mad. Tifa didn't want to get mad. Not at Cloud.

"Don't be bitter, Lockheart." There was a smile plastered on his face. It looked odd to her—like it'd been painted on by a loony artisan. "It's all for the best."

"Shut up. You don't know what you're talking about." She couldn't remember the last time she'd spoken so roughly to him.

It was doubtful that her words got through to his head. Cloud frowned off into the distance, swinging his sword around in the playful manner of a kid twirling a baton. A really huge, freaky-looking baton.

"I'm at a dilemma, Lockheart."

She wished he'd stop calling her that.

"I don't think I should let you live," He stopped swinging his sword long enough to spare her a glance, "But I don't want to kill you either."

Cloud crouched over, forcing her chin up with a pale finger. The friendliness was almost frightening, "Maybe I'm just a nice guy at heart." His nails grazed languidly over her jawline, still sticky with the pasty tang of blood and sweat.

She couldn't help but scoff at his statement, "It's too bad you haven't got one, huh?"

He was smiling again. "What, a heart?"

There was something cold pressing against her stomach. Without the slightest shift in expression, Cloud drove a knife into her gut. The crisp blade sent a fresh crush of heat coursing through her veins—a writhing hot spell that opposed the ice in her fingers.

_Cloud you bastard, that's a kitchen knife._

She was pretty sure she called him something along the lines of a womanish cream puff. It was more amusing to him than insulting— but at this point, Tifa couldn't really hear anything she was saying anymore. It was probably for the best. Only half-conscious of the horrendous suffocating donkey noises she was making, it struck her that she was probably going to die like this. Kneeling over a drain pipe, unattractive donkey-bawling in tow, a goddamn fruit knife stuck to her midriff for fuck's sake….

_How uncouth._

Little freckles of blood sprayed across the sidewalk as another violent coughing fit attacked her body. Her eyelids were getting heavy. Cloud's hand gripped her neck. The whisk of his breath on her face was sending a hypothetical army of ants through her spine. She became angry with the shiver threatening to wrack her insides.

_Goddamn maniac. Stupid, panty-waisted, yellow-haired maniac…._

"You're not going to die." She heard the goddamn maniac say. How strange—the air was turning dark. "You're too angry to die just yet. Better luck next time, eh?"

She responded by leaking more blood over the gritty sidewalk, Cloud's masterpiece of crimson and guts, before crawling into the beckoning blackness that welcomed her.

_Pathetic, Lockheart. A fruit knife, of all things…._

----

Tifa awoke to the incandescent glare of artificial luminescence against her face.

It couldn't be heaven.

The holy afterlife should be able to afford actual light, for one. Not the cheap, dollar-store bulbs that hung over the cellars of interrogation vaults. And Tifa could be fairly sure that the higher powers wouldn't let a Turk anywhere near their pearly gates.

Which meant there was only one option left.

"Am I in hell?"

The abruptness of her revival startled the inattentive redhead guarding her cell, who seemed to be more amused with the buttons of his jacket than the job at hand.

He tilted his head around to regard her with a disquieting smirk, "With the civil pleasure of my company? Not a chance."

Hadn't she dealt with enough jerkish testosterone for one day? Tifa closed her eyes and returned to her former position, "Great. Just great. Dear God, I would like to die now, if you don't mind--"

He frowned, "Hey now--"

"--Preferably through a blindingly illuminative thunderbolt that would fry this cocky pomelo-head to a crisp in the process," She continued, noting the bed she'd been reclining on was rough against her skin. Tifa moved her hand to scratch at the itch irritating her leg…

…And found she'd been stripped down to her underwear.

She didn't try to move anymore, after that.

The redhead made a clucking noise at the back of his throat, and to Tifa's displeasure, twisted his lanky frame around in his chair to face her.

"You don't remember me, do you?"

To be safe, Tifa pulled the blanket all the way to her chin, despite the way the wool was stitched together like fibrous elephant bristles. "Should I?" The material pricked at her arms and scratched the jut of her knees.

"It's only polite, you know, considering the number of favors I've done you so far."

Something clicked at the back of her head, "Reno."

Reno tapped his finger to his skull, simulating soft clack-y sounds against the sheath of his mammoth goggles, "Smart girl."

By then, he'd taken notice of her discomfort, and his grin grew even ass-ier, if it were possible. "So shy. I've seen it all already, you know."

_The little…_

She shut her eyes in frustration, and would've reached through the bars to knock his face off if she wasn't half-naked. For a moment, Tifa contemplated tying her hair into a lasso and strangling him with it.

He picked up on her animosity. "Jeez, slow the hemorrhage fuel, will you? No offense, but you're not really my type."

"Right, because I have hair and I'm not a guy."

"Hey, I resent what you're implying." The toying expression hadn't so much as budged, "Don't be bitter. You'd be a lot more attractive to me if you weren't such a bitch."

_Don't be bitter, Lockheart. _

Why did all these men think alike? Tifa turned her head away from his teasing mug, a faint reminiscent of Cloud's unsettling smile. She chose to fix her stare at a rooted crack in the ceiling, willing it to grow bigger and bigger until it finally enveloped the entire room.

The miniature Cloud in her head continued to mock her.

_You're too angry to die just yet._

It jumped from space to space, immersing its obnoxious sunshine-hair in the opaqueness of her mind.

_Better luck next time, eh?_

"So, who was the black underwear for?"

The hell…? Tifa let herself divert her attention back to the Turk before her. His gaze was piercing, and oddly attentive. She was drawing a blank, "What?"

Reno shifted impatiently in the seat, slinging his gun across his shoulder in an offbeat stretch, "You don't wear black underwear to bake cookies in. Come on, fess up. I won't tell. Who's the secret loverboy?"

"You're an idiot."

"Valentine? Barrett? The old man who sold beer nuts by the orphanage?" He lowered his voice to a taunting murmur, "Was it Cloud?"

Strange. Her face was wet.

He knew he struck a nerve. He had to. "Speaking of the featherhead, I suppose he's not feeling much like himself lately, eh?"

The miniature Cloud was back in her head, bouncing from one wall to the next. Still smiling, it punctured the inside of her brain until scarlet mists squirted from the fleshy crevices.

"Mind control's a funny thing, Lockheart."


	2. Chapter 2

**2:**

Reno's previous remark had blown a gaping hole in the effervescency of their conversation. The juvenile banter was replaced with a cutting silence. Pushing down the acid steadily clawing up her belly, Tifa squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself not to be sick. Not here, at least. Not while she was locked in a Turks' basement, sheathed in some rash-inducing toothbrush-hair blanket.

A thousand tiny question marks encroached her thoughts. This was the Turks' basement? Where were the hulking meatheads with watermelon arms? Why was she stuck with this Astroturf-for-brains buffoon? Was it even a basement? Tifa assumed it was underground, taking into consideration the lack of windows and sufficient lighting. She couldn't tell for sure, though. Maybe Reno was some kind of agoraphobic Satanist who worshiped black candlewax and shied away from sunlight.

_Maybe he's a vampire_.

It would explain the goggles.

Only slightly deluded, Tifa pictured a very rabid Reno emerging from his wooden casket, sweating blood and dissipating into dust as the sunshine gnawed away at his face.

Caskets.

She flinched as Reno's image molded abruptly into Vincent. Vincent, telling her to '_Run you stupid girl, run_.' Vincent, looking down at Cloud's sword slanted in his chest. Vincent, smiling through the blood leaking between his teeth.

Vincent, locking himself in his own casket.

_You always were kind of a freak, Valentine._

"Go ahead and ask."

Reno's clipped declaration shattered her train of thought.

"What?"

He let out an irritated grunt. "You've got questions, right?"

Apparently, Reno had decided to forgo the silent treatment. She could already feel his hooded glare burning imaginary welts into the side of her head. Not feeling particularly sociable, Tifa kept her eyes closed and crinkled her brow, "None that don't challenge your sexual orientation."

The snarky twist of his lips could almost be heard through his words. "I like men, thanks for asking. The balder the better." His overt attempt to crack the ice between them made her mouth involuntarily curl into a smile.

The room became drenched in their silence. Reno was obviously waiting for her to speak—continue their little sparring session, maybe take another jab at his canary-colored cowlick.

"No questions?" The way Reno spoke was difficult to analyze. It was devoid of any tangible emotion, and thickly crusted in falsified dispassion.

She matched his tone. "No questions."

_Not for you, at least. _

"Liar," his voice had taken up a light-hearted glaze, the plastic-coated sound of fake nonchalance, "You've got questions. You just don't want to hear the answers."

At this point, she'd finally allowed herself to look at him. The depth of his hooded gaze bore unflinchingly into her stare, and his profile instinctively molded into Cloud. _Bedroom eyes_, Tifa finds herself thinking.

For a morsel of a second, the man lounging before her was replaced with a more familiar face. The face of a certain deluded ex-SOLDIER—an unrequited love who returned her affection with a handful of torn flesh to her gut. The backs of her eyes were starting to sting, a fitting complement to the dulling throb aching throughout in her midsection. Swamped in a dizzying wave of sentimentality, she pictured Reno's gray orbs melting into a pallid blue. The sharp jut of his jawline softened to a fluid curve as his blunt features molded into Cloud's distinctly ethereal visage. If she kept staring like this, Tifa was sure she could make herself believe he was smiling for her…

…And as quick as it had come, the fabricated Cloud was gone—burrowing back into whatever nameless dreamscape it'd been conceived from.

In its place, Reno was staring back at her rather intently. Bristling, Tifa could feel the rosy warmth swelling across her cheeks as she realized been gawking.

_Oops._

The little crack on the floor suddenly became very worthy of her attention. Even as her gaze diverted, it was clear that Reno's had not.

"Let's play a game," he finally said. Coolly-- as if she hadn't been ogling him a couple seconds earlier. Tifa was damn near shocked the bastard chose not to mock her for her brief lapse into a very literal Cloudland, "You ask a fragmented question, I give a one-word answer. Don't think, don't hesitate—just let me bombard you with information. Purge and splurge."

"What?"

"Yes, like that. You're going to have to be more specific though. For all I know, you could be asking 'What does Reno think of my body?' or maybe 'What is this devilishly handsome, red-headed fellow doing stuck in a dump like this?' But at least we're getting somewhere."

She was annoyed, "What's the purpose?"

"Closure."

"What?"

He sighed, "See, there you go again. You're not very good at this game, Lockheart."

"I don't want to play." Her stomach hurt like hell. Tifa hesitantly touched her hand to her abdomen, startled when it brushed against the tough mesh of medical gauze. She poked the area with a wary finger, grimacing at the instant ripple of piercing heat that pulsed through her sides. Instinctively, her lips pushed into a pained 'Ow.'

Reno noticed. "Masochist, much?"

If she wasn't in so much pain, Tifa might've bothered with a response. Instead, she dropped her chin to her chest, watching her ribcage rise and fall through the material of the blanket. The sustaining rhythm cooled her nerves, and for the first time since she'd awakened, Tifa's head cleared. As the fog lifted from her senses and gave way to reason, it became abundantly clear there was a path she had overlooked.

_Escape._

Of course, how could she be so stupid? Here she was, making small talk with the enemy when all along, she should've been looking for a way out. The gears in her head began to churn—tediously formulating a competent strategy to haul her crippled butt to a faraway land, where she could be free from prickly elephant-blankets and bastards named Reno.

She tried to make her countenance as blank as possible—a prerequisite to telling a convincing lie. "I need to use the bathroom."

It was a clever excuse, Tifa thought. Not very noble in stature, but it wasn't as if she needed to worry about her dignity in front of a guy who made a practice of smashing wine bottles over his skull.

Reno gave a dry 'ha-ha,' and nodded pointedly toward a heavily corroded bucket sitting in the darkest corner of the cell. Tifa, unfamiliar with the concepts behind primordial bathroom etiquette, didn't understand his implications at first. But she got it soon enough.

She was dimly aware of her eyes widening into saucers as Reno looked on, obviously deriving great amusement from the play of grimaces twisting across her face. "You're kidding right?" Tifa was quite aware of the swelling tremor in her tone

"You know, you're being awfully fussy for a guest."

"Guest?" By this time, her voice had climbed a good octave higher. "Do you always keep your guests confined behind prison bars, or is this crap-in-a-bucket treatment part of a special package?"

"Yes, actually, our less privileged guests receive the paper bag treatment. I'd be happy to give you that, if recyclables are more your thing."

Tifa's cinchy plan was crumbling soundly into powder. Minute, ethereal grains of powder that Reno was steadily snorting up his nose.

There was still one last resort to be considered. Feeling incredibly foolish, Tifa sucked up her pride and tried to make her eyes as clear and vast as humanly possible. "Please, Reno?" She could hardly recognize her own voice, and would've laughed if it weren't so utterly pathetic.

The redhead frowned and forced his shirt back over his head, casting her a long look that assured her that his lack of civility in no way reflected his common sense. Being a heartless schmuck was one thing, but being a heartless schmuck with no brain cells was another. Tifa was beginning to realize that Reno wasn't as dense as his loose demeanor entailed him to be.

But she wasn't about to forfeit so easily—not with her freedom (and dignity, for that matter) at stake like this. She'd be damned if she was going to be forced to go anywhere near that stupid bucket.

The first step was to fasten the horrible blanket around her body, offering some form of protection against causeless nudity. Then, blinking deliberately, her legs shifted to the edge of the cot. It squeaked in protest as she dropped her feet to the floor, carefully positioning her torso to accommodate her new stance without taking on any unnecessary pain.

Reno was watching her meticulously.

Tifa's palm planted itself to the wall, generously supporting the bulk of her weight as she guided herself through the arduous journey of shuffling to Reno's side. She grasped the metal bars with stiff fingers, "Please? I won't run away. Really."

He averted her imploring gaze, turning his back before answering, "Sorry, Lockheart. Can't negotiate with prisoners."

So she'd gone from guest to prisoner in less than a minute. The progress was rather depressing. A sour scrape of panic began to clamber up her throat, half because of her current predicament, and half because she was starting to feel an urge to use the bathroom. Urgently, Tifa grabbed a fistful of Reno's shirt. Startled, he attempted to wrench free of her grip.

No avail. "Reno. I think I'm going to be sick." She wasn't lying this time. The tepid manifestation of nausea squirming prosperously around her stomach was enough to make herself bite her lips closed in panic.

A pleading look was directed in Reno's way. As hinted by the strained cringe drawn across his face, he had already deciphered the truth behind her words. Once again, he tried to pry his shirt from her white-knuckled fist. Once again, his efforts were in vain. For all Tifa cared, he could've wrestled her fingers with a crowbar, she wasn't going to let go until he opened the damn cell. If she was going to be sick, she was taking him down with her.

"What the hell are you doing? If you're going to hurl, go aim for the bucket!"

At the mention of bucket, a bilious curl surged upwards to brush against the back of her mouth. "If I hear that word one more time I swear--"

"All right, all right!" he yelled, raising his hands in surrender, "Get out, damn it! Bathroom is straight down, to the left. I swear to god I'll knock you out and shave your head if you try anything funny, so don't even think about running away. Now go!"

She still wouldn't let go of his shirt. Her fingers were beginning to quiver from the overt tension of her hold. "Aren't—Aren't you going to unlock…?"

Reno shot her an exasperated scowl, "If this fucking door came with a lock, do you think I'd be sitting here guarding it?"

At this new revelation, something clicked in Tifa's head. _So all this time, the stupid cell was unlocked?_ The ground before her was starting to turn quite fuzzy, looking much more appealing and comfortable than the ugly metal bars she was draped all over. Maybe if she lay down…

Suddenly, Reno's grungy black shoe was in very close proximity with her nose. If she didn't know better, she might've mistook the giant red blob blinding her vision for a giant strawberry.

In fact, if she didn't know better, she'd think the strawberry was glowering at her. " Well at least you didn't hurl."

Previous qualms in her gut were being overshadowed by immense, and literally blinding pain igniting through her abdomen. Dimly aware of the giant hand swatting at her cheek, she struggled to make sense of the swirling dots burning holes in her eyesight.

Somewhere along the line, the strawberry had pressed his mouth to hers. Wisps of its breathe kissed the back of her throat as she slowly felt herself slipping into unconsciousness.

---

_There was a fire eating at her gut—and it hurt like hell. A searing flame was roasting her intestines, caramelizing her muscles into an immobile mass of smoldering rubble. _

_Cloud was gone. _

_Tifa squinted. The world was strangely misty, as if she was looking at it with a giant veil of tulle over her face. _

'Am I crying…?' 

_Out of impulse, she reached up to rub her eyes in a spontaneous attempt to clear the hazy film obscuring her vision. Her fingers glided across her eyelids, leaving gooey trails of something warm and sticky on her cheeks._

_She raised her hand in front of her._

_Red._

_The burning shade of crimson registered in her mind even before its metallic reek grazed her nostrils. Tifa's hand moved to her stomach, and felt her chest grow heavy as any lasting scraps of optimism scrunched itself into a tiny ball and shattered into shards. The viscous fluid leaked between the cracks of her fingers as she gripped the knife with her hands._

_I think I'm going to die._

_Gritting her teeth, she wrenched it from her gut. A torrid heat spilled from the torn flesh in rapid propulsion, spreading across her abdomen and soaking her hands in its sickening warmth. Choking back a tight gasp, Tifa found herself rather enraged by her whole predicament._

_It wasn't fair at all. She didn't even have a boyfriend yet. She couldn't die before she had the chance to see what the big deal over momentary mouth-to-mouth contact was about. And the almond rum cake she was planning to bake tomorrow—she still had stocks of flour leavening and three bottles of expensive chocolate rum. 'This is ridiculous,' Tifa realized, 'I can't die now. Not with an entire bag of fresh almonds in the pantry.'_

_She'd always imagined her death to be a respectable affair. Her face would be saggy with wisdom, a dozen cavernous wrinkle lines drawn across her forehead as she lay in an exquisite canopy-bed overlooking the countryside. Tifa wanted to die of old age, not from a fucking fruit knife, for pete's sake. Even a goddamn bread knife would've demanded more dignity than this._

_Idly, she wondered if she would at least make a good-looking corpse, and let her eyelids flutter to a close._

_A voice tickled the back of her ears._

"_Holy shit. I think that one's alive." _

---

When Tifa awoke, it took her a while to notice she couldn't move her legs.

_Anesthesia._

She gritted her teeth. _That son of a--_

A brief, biting pain ricocheted off the inner walls of her thighs as she made a useless attempt to pull herself into a sitting position. Startled by the unexpected gripe, Tifa found herself clinging to the edge of the cot, chewing back the frustrated scream steadily brewing in her chest.

The gross elephant-blanket had slipped considerably, and an indecent amount of flesh was exposed for the world to see. The mishap sparked a mounting binge of irritation, further suppressing her dwindling sense of composure. Yanking the sheet to her shoulders, Tifa snuck a disconcerted glare at the back of Reno's head. It was annoyingly bright in its burning ruddiness, a sore contradiction to the drab surroundings. If the higher powers were to grant her with the key to her humble cell, she would've wasted no time in throwing it at the unruly mop of red.

Her brusque flub in modesty left her gravely paranoid of her nakedness. Tifa didn't like being vulnerable, and the current predicament was no exception. Step by step, the slow burn of anger was climbing the stairs toward an insuppressible rage. When she looked up again, Reno was scrutinizing her under the shameless gaze of an unapologetic bastard.

His lip was bleeding.

Tifa stiffened.

"What exactly do you want with me?"

The question tumbled from her mouth with clumsy naiveté, blatantly begging to be twisted and teased to no extent. Tifa could practically see the debauched wheels churning in Reno's head as his bruised lips curved into a pleased smirk.

"Handcuffed to a bedpost lathered in whipped cream, thank you very much." He leaned his forehead against the barframe. "By the way, the next time you go into cardiac arrest, remind me not to give you the mouth-to-mouth." To emphasize this point, Reno pulled his bottom lip over to reveal an admirable gouge in the center of the tissue.

"Mouth-to…." The urge to throw up became pronounced again.

He licked the blood from the gash, holding his lip between his teeth. "This isn't the first time you've returned my generosity with violence, you know. Why, when I fished your bleeding ass from off that sidewalk, I didn't hear a word of appreciation. Nope. Know how you thanked me instead? You bit me—not unlike this humble hole in my mouth right here. Hold on, I'll show you…."

For the third time since she'd woken up, Tifa asked the gods to strike Reno with a thunderbolt. "Make it a really big thunderbolt," she told the crack in the ceiling, thinking it to be an adequate spot to channel her prayers.

"What was that, Lockheart? Hexing me under your breath, hm?"

"…Preferably in a way that fries his tiny pigbrain to a bacon crisp," Tifa continued, paying no heed to Reno's obvious amusement in her sociability with gimpy ceilings. It struck her that perhaps this habit was a bit out of the norm. If celestial forces did exist, what the hell would they be hiding in a crack in the wall for?

At any case, Tifa was not surprised when the higher powers were decisively ignorant to her pleas. The best she could do was console herself with mental picture of Reno's gnarly locks being frazzled into smoky wisps, courtesy of her exertive imagination.

The bastard was talking again. Not that she was listening or anything. "Hey, Lockheart."

She opened one eye to regard him dispassionately, trying to communicate her sheer contempt towards the idea of conversing this buffoon.

Either he was completely inept at reading expressions, or he simply enjoyed prodding her over the brink of sanity. Whatever the matter, Tifa found herself watching with relative alarm as he pulled his rumpled shirt over his head in the casual manner most people removed their socks.

Reno was exceptionally gaunt for a Turk—the angular juts and dips of his bones were conspicuously masked beneath a taut layer of flesh. Tifa counted the knobs of his spine.

One, two, three, four… 

He wasn't quite as lank as Cloud was, but the sharp contrast of sunken concavity made it look as if his bones were too crude for his frame. Reno pointed to the hollowed arch of his shoulder blade. Squinting into the murky shadiness of their precinct, Tifa could just barely make out the blueish half-circle etched out on his skin, "See this?"

Tifa turned away. "No thanks," she said dryly.

"You did that, you know."

"Oh really? And the huge gap in your brain, did I do that too?"

Much to her dismay, the shrewd comment only made his grin grow wider. "You like to bite things, don't you? Could be interesting if you're into the kinky stuff, I guess. But it makes you a very difficult person to save."

_Save?_ Her mind was blank. _What kind of crap is he trying to pull_ The flourishing thump in her brain was blooming through her ears. "Excuse me?"

Reno twisted his neck around in an attempt to survey the pitifully shrimpy battle scar, "You've got shark teeth, Lockheart. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Use them to sharpen swords and stuff. Make a business out of it."

She fingered the gauze taped across her stomach. Something inside her softened a little bit. "I guess I owe you a thanks. For saving me-- back in Midgar, I mean. With the fruit knife in my stomach."

He looked at her with an unreadable expression on his face, before cracking into an easy grin that didn't quite reach his eyes, "You can say that."

"Thank you."

Judging by the sprightly way Reno ducked his head and scraped his foot across the ground, it was apparent he was rather put off by her gratitude, "You shouldn't thank me just yet."

_Just yet._ A heavy seed of dark apprehension planted itself in the roots of her intuition.

In a fluid motion, Reno's head snapped up and he broke into another crooked smirk. It almost succeeded in diverting Tifa's sprouted suspicions from his previous explication. Almost—but not quite.

"Besides, Rude would've killed me if I just left you there to rot. My intentions were completely dishonorable, trust me."

An awkward hush soaked the air before Tifa spoke again. "You know what's wrong with Cloud." It was said in a manner that didn't need confirmation-- but she was demanding it anyhow.

Reno nodded wordlessly.

"You're going to have to kill him to stop him." This was spoken in the same, rhetorical manner.

Reno was looking at her with focused intensity—an expression that made his features impossibly difficult to decipher.

Delicately, she repeated her earlier question, "So… what exactly do you want from me?"

His eyes were stony—a confirmation to the truth behind his response. "You?" he gave a bitter laugh and another one of those smiles that didn't quite reach authenticity. "You're the bait."

--

AN: Next chapter I'll bring Cloud back in, I promise. I haven't gotten very far yet, so again, it might be a while till the next update. Thanks to everyone who reviewed-- I really appreciated it. :) I'm going to be on a bit of a vacay next week-- so I'll try to get the next chapter done before then.


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